Dr. James McLeod has dedicated a lifetime to education, much of it spent at Washington University, one of the nation’s most respected institutions of higher learning.
While he has grown from a youthful Morehouse University undergraduate to a renowned scholar, professor and administrator, McLeod said he is just as enthused about academia as he has ever been in his life.
“In some ways, I even enjoy it more,” he tells the American.
“As you get older things take on new meaning. Since I know what I am doing can mean for the community, it still charges me up. I am doing something that can last for generations. That’s what makes this a terrific job.”
For his dedication to learning, McLeod, Washington University vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named the 2008 St. Louis American Foundation Lifetime Achiever.
McLeod will be honored during the Salute to Excellence in Education Scholarship and Awards Banquet at America’s Center on Friday, Sept. 5.
“It’s quite an honor,” said McLeod, who joined the Washington University staff in 1974 as an assistant professor of German.
How does a black youth from Dothan, Ala., become a professor of German and later a dean at Washington University?
“My parents always had a great respect and value for education,” he said.
“And while I had my family, parents and grandparents supporting me, I wanted to go away to college.”
That urge took him to Morehouse College in Atlanta and then to Rice University in Houston for a graduate degree.
His research included the cultural history of turn-of-the-century Vienna and post-war Germany. He also spent a summer as a volunteer in Kenya with Operation Crossroads Africa and studied for two years at the University of Vienna in Austria.
“I always liked to read. Reading is what propelled me,” he said.
McLeod was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a NDEA (National Defense Education Act) Fellow. In 1991, he received the Washington University Founders Day Distinguished Faculty Member Award.
While he says it was not his original plan to be a professor and spend his career on some the nation’s most prestigious campuses, “I thought about the long term.”
“I wanted to take the steps that would help me make the most of where I was and what I was doing,” he said.
Those steps ultimately led him to Washington University, where colleagues and students revere him.
“Jim McLeod is the truly great citizen of Washington University,” says Gerald Early, a professor of English and African-American studies who directs the university’s Center for the Humanities.
“I learned so much from him, about administration, about students, about dealing with other people. He has been so helpful to me in the course of my career and a real role model. I know the students, the faculty, and other administrators love him as well.”
Before arriving at Washington University, he was a faculty member in the German Department at Indiana University in Bloomington.
At Washington University, along with his assistant professor responsibilities, he also served as assistant dean of the graduate school of Arts & Sciences from 1974 to 1977.
From 1977 to 1987, he was assistant to the then Chancellor William H. Danforth. From 1987 to 1992, he was director of African and Afro-American Studies. In 1992, he was named dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. He also serves as a director of the John B. Ervin Scholars Program and the Enterprise Rent-a-Car Scholars.
McLeod’s service to community doesn’t stop at the Danforth Campus.
He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Youth Foundation, the National Council on Youth Leadership, the St. Louis Art Museum, and Churchill Center & School for Learning Disabilities. He chairs the Board of Express Scripts Foundation and the Advisory Board of New City School.
McLeod and his wife, Clara, have one daughter, Sara, and reside in the City of St. Louis.
